20220510

Every time I visit a medical center I am reminded of how little the software designers seem to consider the user interaction. The place I visited had just migrated their software and the patients had all sorts of complaints as did the staff in trying to figure out what to do. Feels like there’s a huge disconnect between the developers and users and its frankly quite frustrating to witness.

It’s impossible to not see the inefficiencies at play in medical settings and makes you want to get involved to help improve it. I’m sure only then can you realize just how monumentally hard it must be to make positive changes since I’m surely not the smartest or remotely first person to make this observation. On the bright side we’re only getting better at figuring these things out so hopefully we can see even more improvements over time. I can’t imagine what it must have been like pre-computer to try to go to different hospitals and coordinate care.


Daily Listening

This song has been sticking with me.

Daily Reading

Read a good chunk of On The Move while waiting 40 minutes for my doctor (while in the appointment room!). Lots to reflect on. His friend, the poet Thom Gunn, he described at intentionally choosing a life of leisure and only working minimally to sustain this life which enabled him to be “intense” about reading. This piqued my interest as it is a potential lifestyle I have considered. I’m just not sure if I would be able to find it fulfilling as I am not a world class author (at least not yet 👀) and I would feel that I am not giving back enough to the world. Reading is taking from so many others contributions and it feels wrong to only do that without giving back in someway, and writing is one way to do so. He was also very different from me in many ways, namely being a commune dweller in San Francisco since the 60s and being immersed in the drug culture. Oliver Sacks offers a different perspective by following a life that is pretty intensely dedicated to his work and writing. I think the interested thread between the two is that they both chose to live their lives intentionally and did not try to follow some common path; they did what interested them and became increasingly unabashed in what they did. I just need to figure out what that looks like for me.